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scripture fulfilled in your ears," he proceeded with the ready utterance which practice had given him to speak words so exceeding sweet and gracious that the Nazarenes wondered, and put one to another the question, as if half doubting when they asked it, "Is not this Joseph's son ?” according to other accounts, asking, "Whence hath this man this wisdom? Is not this the carpenter's son ? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses and Simon and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him.”1

He had grown up in their midst; some of them had played with him as a boy; he had received no better education than had been given to them, and now the commonplace dullards stood agape when it appeared what loftier spirit than their own had dwelt among them unheeded. The cause of their anger is not clear, but it would doubtless arise through the wider scope which he gave to the words of Isaiah; their

1 Matt. xiii. 54-56; Mark vi. 2, 3.

narrowness evoked reproof from him; he retorted by telling them that "no prophet is accepted in his own country, or in his own house;" and then some of the angrier among his hearers, so it is said, sought to kill him by throwing him from a steep rock, but he escaped down the mountain path, and returned to Capernaum.

How slender was the tie between Jesus and his relations, caring as he did so little for the mere bond of nature where no kinship of spirit was present, is shown in the following incident, which perhaps belongs to a later period in his ministry. One day, when a crowd had gathered round the house at Capernaum where he was preaching, some one pushed through to tell him that his mother and brethren wanted to speak to him. According to one account, they had given it as their belief that he was mad,1 and now perchance sought to restrain him or take him back with them. Whatever may have been their motive, he harshly resented the interruption, asking, "Who are my mother and my brothers? Then

1 Mark iii. 21.

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looking upon his disciples, he said, "Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and sister and mother."1 On another occasion, when a woman in the crowd, moved by his winsome teaching, "lifted up her voice and said unto him, Blessed the womb that bare thee and breasts which thou didst suck, he answered," with what reproof, if the after idolatry of his mother had been known to him, let them ponder who practise it, "Nay rather, blessed they that hear the word of God and keep it." 2

IV.

His Mode of Teaching.

CONCERNING the method of his discourses, one of the "fathers," as the early Christian writers are called, thus tersely describes it :-"His speeches were short and convincing, for he was not a sophist, but his word was the power of God." 1 Mark iii. 31-35. 2 Luke xi. 27, 28.

Like the sages and rabbis, he delighted in the use of pithy, telling sentences, which often sparkled with a fresh, kindly humour, and sank into the memory when more wordy discourses might have passed by unheeded. As, for example, in such sayings as these :—

“ "No one puts a new patch upon an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment and the rent is made worse."

"Neither do men put new wine into old skins, else the skins burst and the wine runs out. But they put new wine into new skins and both are preserved."

“They that are healthy need not a doctor, but they that are sick."

"First pluck the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye."

"Which of you by anxious thought can add to his lifetime one cubit?"

"Some men strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” "Do men gather grapes off thorns and figs off thistles? So men, like trees, are known by their fruits."

"If ye keep not that which is small, who will give you that which is great?"1

"The lamp of the body is the eye; if thine eye be sound, thy whole body will be full of light."

1 Westcott's Study of the Gospels, p. 426, where a list of the traditional sayings of Jesus is given.

Sometimes he spoke in enigmas, as when he

said:

"Let the dead bury their dead."

"A camel shall go through the eye of a needle before a rich man shall enter the kingdom of God."

66 He who saveth his life shall lose it."

But following an art dear to the story-telling East, earliest home of our fables and folk-lore, he freely made use of the "parable," placing beside, as that word means, the truth he taught some illustration" from the life of men and the world around to throw light upon it, and make it clear or awaken attention, as in the story of the sage who one sultry afternoon, when expounding a subtle question of the law and seeing his listeners becoming drowsy, suddenly burst out, "There was once a woman in Egypt who brought forth at one birth six hundred thousand men." At this his hearers roused themselves, and then the teacher calmly went on to tell them that her name was Jochebed, and that she was the mother of Moses, who was worth as much as all that number of armed men

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